ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two texts by Zahia Rahmani, Moze and 'Musulman' Roman, in which the protagonists, like the Touirellil family, are disempowered and reduced to the status of outsiders or beggars by a sinister French bureaucracy. Published in 2003, Moze is offered as a testimony to the life and death of the author's father, Moze, who killed himself on Remembrance Day 1991, after visiting the local war memorial. Moze was a harki; a Muslim Algerian recruited to fight for the French during the War of Independence. As the inverted commas of the title indicate, 'Musulman' Roman explores the meaning of the term Musulman as a generic, politically loaded identity label, the fictionalized characterization of which is suggested by the second part of the title: Roman. The chapter focuses on Zahia Rahmani's novels in relation to the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's understanding of modern Western power.
